The bouldering trends - Steeper, Quicker, More and Rounded

Bouldering is getting more popular and nowadays there are almost no hard core guys who just do routes. This has dramatically increased the number of FA 8A and harder the last years and probably it is anyhow just the beginning. Although we have seen a nice boulder community progress when it comes to grades up to 8C, the progress can best be measured by the quickness of the ascents. It seems we see less long time projecting and instead the boulderes more enjoy doing variety of hard boulders. A further explanation to this is of course all the great videos out there. Another trend is that fewer of the hard FA and repeated boulders, lately, are slightly overhanging challenging the closed crimp. The good reason for this is of course that an 8B vertical is more painful than a steep one. Actually, the trend is doing steep rounded or arete boulders more challenging the open crimp or open hand position like on Meadow Lark Lemmond 8B+ in Red Rocks. Paul Robinson put up the great boulder in 2012 and the last four months we have seen at least eight repeats including Jakob Schubert's on the picture.